CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH
In conjunction with Mother’s Day, Prestige Malaysia talks to three exceptional mothers who work alongside their daughters – as business partners, invaluable mentors and best friends.
In conjunction with Mother’s Day, Prestige talks to three exceptional mothers who work alongside their daughters
“You hear people say that if you work together, it can create problems or break families apart. Instead, I found that we were much closer. How many parents get to know their children as students?” anne tham
Anne Tham, Erica Tham & Grace Tham by Kiran Pillay
They say a mother would do anything for the good of her children. Anne Tham sets the bar high as the teacher who built an education empire to ensure her progeny would have the best guidance to prepare them for life in an increasingly competitive world. Today, Anne is group CEO of ACE EdVenture, working alongside her daughters Erica and Grace, playing integral roles in transforming Malaysia’s education scene by gamifying challenging subjects and nurturing future entrepreneurial leaders.
The journey began in the ‘90s, when Anne, then a college lecturer, noticed many postsecondary students struggling to thrive in a higher education setting. “Education was not making sense,” Anne observes. She explains that even after 11 years of education, these students lacked basic English proficiency and the confidence to communicate effectively.
The biggest challenge appeared to be that many students struggled to coherently form and present arguments, quite aside from their language proficiency. Writing academic papers was another area of significant difficulty. Realising that there was an urgent need for a system that would facilitate some sort of reform and remediation, Anne opened an English tuition centre in 1995 with the support of her husband, daughters and her sister, Melinda Lim.
ACE EdVenture expanded with the opening of Sri Emas and Dwi Emas International Schools in 2012 and 2015, respectively. The latter is Malaysia’s first-ever entrepreneurial school with children as young as seven being taught how to run profitable and sustainable businesses. To date, as a direct result of this visionary training, their student-owned enterprises have generated revenue north of a quarter-million ringgit.
Growing up, Erica and Grace were privy to a hands-on approach to entrepreneurship. “My daughters were helping me with my business from the ages of seven and nine,” Anne recalls fondly. The girls would assist with various tasks like answering phone calls and organising lesson sheets. She credits the growth of ACE as being rooted in her love and concern for her own children’s educational journey. “I did it for them, with them, and in the future it will be led by them,” Anne shares. “We were lucky,” Erica chimes in, “to grow up with a mum who saw a problem and took action.”
In the beginning, Anne found herself considering the drawbacks of working with family. “You hear people say that if you work together, it can create problems or break families apart. Instead, I found that we were much closer,” she says. “How many parents get to know their children as students?” She feels privileged to have met her daughters’ friends and shared meaningful conversations with their peers.
As adults, the Tham sisters chose to continue supporting their mother’s vision for educational innovation. “The culture is empowering,” Erica says, now the chief EdVenture officer of the ACE EdVenture Studio that produced ChemCaper, the world’s first chemistry adventure game. She wants to do her part in building a company where people would be happy to work. “At the end of the day, we are teachers. For us, it is always about empowering students, and so we try to do that for our people as well,” Erica elaborates. Grace is the director of training at ACE EdVenture, ensuring that their teachers are ready to approach and deliver a 21st century education.
Anne is proud of her daughters, who are second-generation leaders in a revolutionary cause. “The two of them, along with our team, are venturing into avenues that I could not have done when I was their age. They are better teachers than I ever was,” Anne remarks.
Approaching the 15th year of working together, the trio have seen exponential growth and diversification of their company. “What I always needed was their brains, their effort and their creativity.”
The admiration is mutual. Erica views her mother as a courageous, steel magnolia while Grace describes her as a true visionary with the rare ability to see the best in people. “With her, it’s always about how we harness each individual’s unique strength, promote inclusion and focus on abilities instead of disabilities. This is harder to do than you would imagine,” Grace shares in awe. She recognises the importance of cultivating like-minded talent to advance ACE EdVenture’s mission.
Marvelling at her mother’s ability to nurture confident youth and draw out hidden potential, Erica shares that it has been a privilege to be able to support student growth in a visible and powerful way. She aspires to emulate and build on her mother’s immeasurable wisdom. “We should always add value to the people around us. I think that is a beautiful way to live life, because it is always focused on giving first,” Grace adds, sharing the lesson she learned at her mother’s knee.
With the future looking bright for ACE EdVenture, Anne conveys her hope for her daughters’ futures. “When people talk about success, they say you stand on someone else’s shoulders. We are always standing on our parents’ shoulders. I want my daughters to stand on mine, and not have to build from the ground up. In turn, with their creativity, intelligence, and heart, I see them lifting many others higher’.
Nurul Izzah Anwar & YM Raja Nur Safiyah by Kiran Pillay
Nurul Izzah Anwar is a loving mother who leads by example, imparting to her children the importance of acting with empathy and compassion towards all people. A member of parliament for Permatang Pauh, she is serving her third term in the Malaysian legislature while remaining a member of Parti Keadilan Rakyat. She is a strong proponent of human and civil rights, with a special interest in prisoners of conscience.
“Raising children teaches you to learn to love something more than yourself. Motherhood has taught me a great deal about sacrifice and selflessness,” Nurul Izzah shares. “Most of the initiatives that I am involved with have been inspired by my children, Safiyah and Harith. As a mother, you always want to leave them with a legacy and do something meaningful for them.” The outspoken politician knows that it takes more than a single act to build a legacy of kindness. She is engaged in numerous pursuits to empower women, eradicate poverty, treat opioid addiction, and address much-needed prison reforms.
Her daughter, 12-year-old YM Raja Nur Safiyah, looks up to her with great admiration and a growing understanding of her mother’s ambitious efforts. “She’s a very positive person,” Nur Safiyah remarks, a keen observer of her mother’s exuberant spirit in the face of a hectic daily schedule. The pair are close as Nur Safiyah explains that her mother’s best trait is an understanding nature – especially where examination results are concerned. “I have also learned a lot from Safiyah. She is far more thoughtful, circumspect, and calmer than I am,” the proud mother says, pleased to have an ally in her daughter.
As Nur Safiyah cheers her mother and role model on, Nurul Izzah works hard to uplift the women of her district. Single mothers and underprivileged women benefit from the Permatang Pauh Women’s Project, which trains local women in post-natal care industries and creative industries like sewing. Armed with technical skills and entrepreneurial guidance, these women can pursue their vocations of choice and provide for their families. “During the pandemic, many women helped us sew PPE sets for Hospital Seberang Jaya and other health clinics in my constituency,” Nurul Izzah says.
Social justice and the dangers of everincreasing societal inequality are recurring themes in her work. These issues have been thrown into especially sharp relief against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic. Deeply sensitive to the plight of detainees, recalling her own earliest experiences visiting prison and those of her own children, Nurul Izzah is especially vocal about the situation facing incarcerated citizens in overcrowded prisons.
She observes that the poor are disproportionately penalised, with many of those detained belonging to the B40 group. Within that subset, more than half of convictions are linked to drug-related petty crimes. As a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Malaysia for the Reform of All Places of Detention, Nurul Izzah is a part of the collective effort urging for the immediate release of eligible, non-violent people to curb the outbreak of more prison clusters. The prevention of these clusters mitigates the spread of the virus not only to inmates but also officers, their families, neighbourhoods, and society at large.
“In a lot of my discussions with Safiyah and Harith, we talk about how people come from different economic backgrounds and how we can change lives,” the politician explains. “You want your children to value and cherish human life. More than leaving them with monetary wealth, it is really important to leave them with a heart that’s intact.”
Thoughtful about this legacy she has so mindfully articulated for her children, Nurul Izzah reminds us that the work is far from done. Our children, the next generation of young Malaysians deserve more. Whether working to highlight multi-dimensional inequalities in our society, tackling issues such as community drug addiction, empowering women towards independence, finding means to give others a “second chance” in life and mapping out astute ways to “future proof ” our country from challenges beyond those of Covid-19, the work is always in service of the adults of tomorrow.
Nurul Izzah is particularly fond of New Zealand’s attitude, which places the focal point of governance in ensuring the safety and wellbeing of all children. “That is the leading vanguard for all the policies taking place across agencies and governments – and that is beautiful because we cannot afford to just be concerned with the plight and success of our own children.”
This close-knit mother-daughter duo understands that there are many ways in which to build a better future for those around them. Although Nur Safiyah has no interest in pursuing a career in politics like her mother, she does aspire to build and develop communities as an architect. Nurul Izzah supports her daughter with unbridled enthusiasm. “I want her to feel that she can reach her full potential. She should always try her best to achieve her dreams, but by the same token also understand with the relative mobility she achieves in life, not to forget those who are vulnerable and in need of help. That is all I could ask for.”
“Most of the initiatives that I am involved with have been inspired by my children, Safiyah and Harith. As a mother, you always want to leave them with a legacy and do something meaningful for them” nurul izzah
Outfits, all Bottege Veneta
Maria Tan & Angeline Tan by Justin Ng
Angeline Tan locks eyes with her mother Maria. Amidst laughter, their gaze speaks of a filial bond. Flashing a genuine smile, Angeline endears herself to the camera. Her photogenic nature belies her usually studious mien.
Basking in the spotlight literally, it appears that Angeline is taking that after her mother who, the photographer notes, has the quintessential commercial look. A case of coincidence?
Perhaps not as Maria lets us in on her secret. Though a culinary maven having founded the eponymous Maria’s SteakCafe, Maria had quite a successful commercial modelling career. She was the face for a slew of branded campaigns, including household skincare products, in her heyday. “When I was young like her,” Maria says with a laugh, glancing towards Angeline; to which Angeline protests. Their chemistry is unmistakable.
Despite modestly reminding everyone on set of her age, the runner-up at the 1976 Miss Malaysia beauty pageant continues to exude the kind of expressiveness only a competent commercial model can muster. A shred of nerves? Not at all. Maria is loving every minute of our two-hour-long shoot. No doubt, she is reliving her memories.
Ever the vivacious character, Maria’s odyssey into F&B was an evolving journey. “After I got married, I became a woman of leisure, looking after my children,” Maria says with a chuckle, revealing she is a doting mother to four daughters and a son.
Ipoh being a small city where communities were tightly knit, Maria discovered her leisurely time was best spent with a group of like-minded ladies who would gather to share their culinary experiences. Gradually, Maria’s passion in cooking ignited and she was nominated as president of their little club. “We did a lot of charitable work. We would cook and bake, and whatever proceeds from the foods we sold, we would donate to charitable organisations,” Maria says, adding that she also learned her craft from her husband’s chef friends.
And thanks to her epicurean parents, Angeline grew up in a conducive environment that encouraged her taste bud to develop. “Even when I was in primary school, my father taught me to fry rice and that is the first dish I learned to cook,” she says, adding that she remembers coming home to her father’s fried rice. “And when my mum started doing pies and pastries at home, I learned to roll pastry till midnight.”
As a family, Maria says they were inclined towards beef. Roast beef was a family tradition. “When my husband’s business didn’t do so well, I got into setting up the restaurant. That is why I chose Western cuisine,” she says of the genesis of Maria’s SteakCafe, which opened its doors in Ipoh in 1999.
Though harbouring a distant dream to take over from her mother, Angeline was a highachieving student who scored an Asean scholarship to study in Singapore. Despite Angeline’s reluctance to leave her mother behind, Maria insisted her take up the once-ina-lifetime offer.
“At the time, people thought that you needed to have a professional degree and that was the future,” Angeline recalls, justifying her reason to pursue actuarial science. As fate would have it, Angeline’s eldest sister who was running a second Maria’s SteakCafe decided to become a homemaker, coinciding with Angeline completing her three-year bond, paving the way for her to assume the outlet vacated by her sister.
“It was quite stressful at the time because I didn’t really know how to cook the things in the restaurant and I had never run a restaurant before. I had to learn everything from scratch,” she says candidly. “My mum was looking after the Ipoh restaurant at the time and she wouldn’t be able to hold my hands every step of the way, I just had to learn it on my own.”
Today, Maria’s SteakCafe has flourished into five restaurants. The latest being Maria’s Signature located at Suria KLCC. It has been quite a remarkable transformation for Maria – the beauty queen turned woman of leisure turned restaurateur who gives an uncoloured account that establishing her first restaurant was a difficult time filled with lots of ups and downs.
And so, it is only right that I ask Maria for some sound advice on running a restaurant.
“The most important thing is that you have to learn to cook. Otherwise, you will depend entirely on the chef. There were many a time, I was played out by the chef. So, you must know the basics because even though the chef has left you, you can still do the cooking,” she says, adding that formed the basis of which she advocated for Angeline to enrol in Le Cordon Bleu courses.
Angeline chimes in with her own take on operating a business with family members. While things come naturally between Maria and Angeline, Angeline says it is advisable to lay down the laws regarding the segregation of responsibilities between family members.
“It is really about respect. I have so much respect for my mum. I listen to what she says and I learn everything from her. But at the same time, working with my mum is very easy. She gives me freedom in anything I want to do. She trusts my judgement and knows I will make the right decisions,” Angeline says. “The only part of the business I have to get her approval is the food. We split our roles very clearly. If it is food, it is mum’s. If it is marketing and other things, then I can decide.”
As we wrap up the photoshoot, I ask Angeline how she feels being the CEO of Maria’s SteakCafe. “It is like a dream,” she beams. “It was only 10 years ago that I came back from Singapore to this little café in Damansara Perdana.”
“Working with my mum is very easy. She gives me freedom in anything I want to do. She trusts my judgement and knows I will make the right decisions” angeline tan